Monday, 30 January 2017

No, I've not gone all George Lucas and started a new series with part 4. This is in fact the legitimate part 4 of a post series that began back in 2013!

That's right! After a four year hiatus, that included a house move, four job changes and a new baby who has grown into a toddler, I have finally made some progress on my gaming board. Hey, I may be laid back but I get there in the end… sometimes.

So the board was originally meant to be for my now defunct Dark Crucible ruleset. The frame and foam base have been kicking around attics, spare rooms and garages for ages now, getting more damaged by the year. I've always wanted to go back and finish it but for a long time it seemed very unlikely things would progress at all. With my recent stint at rule writing I've been looking to get a new neoprene gaming mat (as they are a superior solution) but every time I went into the garage I'd see my board looking neglected and very sorry for itself. I decided to just do something about it, so (disguised as part of a household chore) I spent some time knocking things into shape.

I've sanded down the frame ready for some undercoat. There were some sharp edges there so I was keen to get it user friendly. I was also bothered by how high the foam sat above the edge of the frame. My original plan was to carve some wonderful rolling hills into it, but that was a little ambitious as I discovered. I'm going for something a little more reserved this time as an opening effort. I spent a long time trimming several millimetres off the top of the foam to get it closer. Once done it looked pretty rough so I gave that a sanding before pouring lots of pva glue on it to fill a few holes and scattering some larger sand/stones on there.

The plan now it to cover the rest of the board with a combination of red oxide and textured emulsion to get a nice, flexible surface. Once that is complete I can paint it and get on with the flocking!!

Thursday, 19 January 2017

It saw the first instalment of the resurrected Tuesday Gaming Night - something that fell by the wayside over ten years ago! - which was immense. It is something that I have wanted to try and implement for a long time, but it just hasn't been practical up until now. I may be talking this up too soon, but I'm very upbeat at the prospect of regular gaming - even if gaming every week is not possible, Tuesday night has been marked off on the family calendar as hobby night, so it's down to me to make the most of the opportunity.

Tuesday night also saw the first game of Blood Bowl played by myself and Bull in two and a half years. We were very rusty to say the least - my Dark Elves for some reason aiming for a 4+ roll for their dodges, Bull forgetting the fact he had re-rolls, and some key rules being forgotten completely.

It was a practice game in name only, using the larger pitch for the re-released box set. Bull (using his newly painted Human team) and myself (with the ever reliable Dark Elves) found ourselves strangely nervous throughout - the will to win... and in style... overwhelming at times.

I won't go into too much detail about the game, as it was calamitous from a rules perspective and took far too long - 12 turns in 3 hours (that's right, we didn't even finish). The highlights included: using some random special play cards that were overpowered but didn't seem to have much effect (except the one that hamstrung my runner for the entire game!); Bull managing to eventually score in the 8th turn of the first half after getting bogged down in the middle for most of the half; me nicking a very quick score early in the second, only for Bull to grab a second with the last roll of the dice. Towards the end of the evening chances were being taken quite liberally - I had one Blitzer attempt a move that involved two negative dodges, two normal dodges and to 'Go For It' rolls (the last of which he finally failed).

The conclusion was Bull remembering how much he loves this game, and me remembering my love/hate relationship it and how the randomness of dice rolling can ruin your evening, never mind best laid plans. It's all very exciting stuff, and we're hoping to rope in a few more people for practice games and maybe a bit of a league... for fun!

Oh, and the blog had a birthday this last week too - 7 years old!!

I don't count the visitor numbers anymore as the spambots have killed any hope of getting a realistic view. Despite not posting nearly as often as I used to I have tripled the traffic, it's just not valuable or genuine traffic. I'd like to think that with the re-invention of Tuesday Night Gaming I'll have more to post about, but we've been here before. I'll just promise to post when I have something genuine to show and tell!